Conan had had enough. In one surge of motion, he bounded to his feet, seized the lashing end of the whip, and tore it out of Gorthangpo's grip. The overseer yelled for the marines.
There was still no way for Conan to get the iron ring off the loom of his oar. In his desperation, an inspiration struck him. The construction of the oarlock limited the vertical motion of the loom to a height of less than five feet above the deck on which he stood. Now he pushed the butt end of the oar up as far as it would go, climbed to the bench, and crouching, placed his shoulders beneath the loom. Then, with a terrific heave of his long, powerful legs, he straightened up.
The oar broke in its oarlock with a rending crash. Quickly, Conan slipped his ring off the broken end. Now he had a serviceable weapon: a club or quarterstaff nine feet long, with a ten-pound mass of lead on one end.
Conan's first terrific swing caught the goggling overseer on the side of the head. His skull shattered like a melon, spattering the benches with a bloody spray of pulped brains. Then Conan hauled himself to the catwalk to meet the charge of the marines. Below on the benches, the scrawny, brown Meruvians crouched, whimpering prayers to their devil-gods. Only Juma imitated Conan's act, breaking his oar at the oarlock and slipping his slave ring loose.
The marines were Meruvians themselves, lax and lazy and fatalistic. They had never had to fight a slave mutiny; they did not believe such a thing possible. Least of all had they expected to have to face a burly young giant armed with a nine-foot club. Still, they came on bravely enough, although the width of the catwalk allowed them to approach Conan only two abreast.
Conan waded in, swinging wildly. His first blow hurled the first marine off the catwalk and into the benches with a broken sword arm. The second dropped the next man with a shattered skull. A pike was thrust at his naked breast; Conan knocked the pike out of its welder's hand, and his next blow hurled two men at once off the catwalk; the one whom he had struck with crushed-in ribs, and his companion jostled off the walk by the impact of the first victim's body.
Then Juma climbed up beside him. The Kushite's naked torso gleamed like oiled ebony in the dim moonlight, and his oar mowed down the advancing Meruvians like a scythe. The marines, unprepared to face two such monsters, broke and ran for the safety of the poop deck, whence their officer, just aroused from slumber, was screeching confused commands.
Conan bent to the corpse of Gorthangpo and searched his pouch for the key ring. Swiftly he found the key to all the manacles on the ship and unlocked his own, then did the same for Juma.
A bow twanged, and an arrow whistled over Conan's head and struck the mast. The two freed slaves did not wait to pursue the battle further.
Dropping off the catwalk, they pushed through the cowering rowers to the rail, vaulted over the side, and vanished into the dark waters of Shamballah's harbor. A few arrows sped after them, but in the dim light of the setting crescent moon the archers could do little more than shoot at random.
SIX: Tunnels of Doom
Two naked men hauled their dripping bodies out of the sea and peered about them in the murk. They had swum for hours, it seemed, looking for a way to get into Shamballah unobserved. At last they had found the outlet to one of the storm sewers of the ancient stone city. Juma still trailed the length of broken oar with which he had fought the marines; Conan had abandoned his on the ship. Occasionally a faint gleam of light came into the sewer from a storm grating set into a gutter in the street overhead, but the light was so feeble—the thin moon having set—that the darkness below remained impenetrable. So, in almost total darkness, the twain waded through the slimy waters, seeking a way out of these tunnels.
Huge rats squeaked and fled as they went through the stone corridors beneath the streets. They could see the glimmer of eyes through the dark. One of the larger scavengers nipped Conan's ankle, but he caught and crushed the beast in his hands and flung its corpse at its more cautious fellows. These quickly engaged in a squealing, rustling battle over the feast, while Conan and Juma hurried on through the upward-winding tunnels.
It was Juma who found the secret passage. Sliding one band along the dank wall, he accidentally released a catch and snorted with surprise when a portion of the stone gave way beneath his questing fingers.
Although neither he nor Conan knew where the passage led, they took it, as it seemed to slope upward toward the city streets above.
At last, after a long climb, they came to another door. They groped in utter darkness until Conan found a bolt, which he slid back. The door opened with a squeak of dry hinges to his push, and the two fugitives stepped through and froze.
They stood on an ornamental balcony crowded with statues of gods or demons in a huge, octagonal temple The walls of the eight-sided chamber soared upward, past the balcony, to curve inward and meet to form an eight-sided dome. Conan remembered seeing such a dome towering among the lesser buildings of the city, but he had never inquired as to what lay within it.
Below, at one side of the octagonal floor, a colossal statue stood on a plinth of black marble, facing an altar in the exact center of the chamber. The statue dwarfed everything else in the chamber. Rising thirty feet high, its loins were on a level with the balcony on which Conan and Juma stood. It was a gigantic idol of a green stone that looked like jade, although never had men found true jade in so large a mass. It had six arms, and the eyes in its scowling face were immense rubies.
Facing the statue across the altar stood a throne of skulls, like that which Conan had already seen in the throne room of the palace on his arrival in Shamballah, but smaller. The toadlike little god-king of Mem was seated on this throne.
As Conan's glance strayed from the idol's head to that of the ruler, he thought he saw a hideous suggestion of similarity between the two. He shuddered and his nape prickled at the hint of unguessable cosmic secrets that lay behind this resemblance.
The rimpoche was engaged in a ritual. Shamans in scarlet robes knelt in ranks around the throne and the altar, chanting ancient prayers and spells. Beyond them, against the walls of the chamber, several rows of Memvians sat cross-legged on the marble pavement. From the richness of their jewels and their ornate if scanty apparel, they appeared to be the officials and the nobility of the kingdom. Above their heads, set in wall brackets around the balcony, a hundred torches flickered and smoked. On the floor of the chamber, in a square about the central altar, stood four torcheres, each crowned by the rich, gplden flame of a butter lamp. The four flames wavered and sputtered.
On the altar between the throne and the colossus lay the naked, white, slender body of a young girl, held to the altar by slender golden chains. It was Zosara.
A low growl rumbled in Conan's throat. His smouldering eyes burned with blue fire as he watched the hated figures of King Jalang Thonpa and his Grand Shaman, the wizard-priest Tanzong Tengri.
"Shall we take them, Conan?" whispered Juma, his teeth showing white in the flickering dimness. The Cimmerian grunted.
It was the festival of the new moon, and the god-king was wedding the daughter of the king of Turan on the altar, before the many-armed statue of the Great Dog of Death and Terror, Yama the Demon King. The ceremony was proceeding according to the ancient rites prescribed in the holy texts of the Book of the Death God. Placidly anticipating the public consummation of his nuptials with the slim, long-legged Turanian girl, the divine monarch of Mem lolled on his throne of skulls as ranks of scarlet-clad shamans droned the ancient prayers.